Saturday, August 21, 2010

Moving is a part of life. I feel pretty safe in making the assumption that EVERYONE hates it. The packing. The actual physical moving of your stuff. The unpacking. The getting settled into the new place and finding new homes for all of your belongings. It sucks.

Like any professional person who went to college and has lived in a big city for some time, I have had my share of moves. Truth be told, I hate moving mostly because I hate change. I recall when my parents told me that we were moving from one house in the neighborhood to another. I cried for weeks. That dream house into which my family had moved nearly ten years earlier would be another family's dream home. Of course, our new house was better, no doubts about it. And come on. I didn't have any say in the matter. It's not like I was mortgaging the family homes at the age of fifteen. Sand Park Pool didn't pay me that much.

Then there was the succession of college moves. From the first big one where your parents dropped you off with your brand new tiny fridge and shower caddy and bid you a tearful goodbye to the time you moved out of the dorms sans parental help. I had the usual moves. After college, I moved in with my boyfriend at the time and another guy. I was preparing for law school and the rest was dirt cheap. One year later, I was out on my own. I moved into a studio with the smallest kitchen you have ever seen. I sold my car, bought a kitten and settled in. For four and a half years. It was the longest I had lived anywhere since we moved out of the dream house in 1996.

The move out of the studio was the worst move ever. It involved minimal packing, a canceled moving truck, and manual labor from two guys and my brother, paid for with a sushi dinner. It took three days, I got horribly lost in Humboldt Park after midnight when I was trying to return the moving truck (which means nothing to you unless you know Chicago...if you do, my street cred is a little bit higher now, yes?), and shed so many tears. My brother didn't speak to me for the better part of a year after that. It was brutal.

Two years later, I chose to hire movers, and I had P.I.C. there to supervise the packing process. He had to literally stand in my living room and make me pack. Despite my whining and temper tantrums, he got me to pack everything up timely. Turns out I respond well to bribery. The morning of the move, the movers showed up ON TIME, and three and a half hours later, I was in my new home.

And here I am today. "Packing" for yet another move. (I put packing in quotations because I spent most of the day on my couch resting. Not packing. And, quite clearly, I am blogging. I suck at packing.) This move will be a big one. I'm moving in with the P.I.C. It's a move that has been anticipated for awhile, yet all of a sudden, it's happening. Like now.

I am panicky, of course. Obviously, moving sucks. I think that's been established. And the packing. (And the long-established fact that I suck at it.) And the big life change that this move symbolizes. Oh boy. But mostly, this apartment in which I have lived for the past fourteen months was really my favorite place I have ever lived. It is the perfect size for me and Oxford. Sadly, P.I.C. doesn't quite fit. Well, our collective wardrobes wouldn't fit. Let's be honest, we are both love clothes and shopping. In looking at one apartment with little closet space and talking about how we would have to purge much, P.I.C. says to me, "Come on, like you could really get rid of a shirt each time you bought a new one." I retorted (because only a retort is appropriate given his display of sass), "Yeah, look who's talking, clothes whore." His response? "Touche." (Put that one on the board, folks!)

Gotta go. Either my Thai food has arrived, or P.I.C. is here to check on packing progress. I may be in trouble. Shooooot.